A common question is,"How do I know when my child is ready to start sleep coaching?".

The easy answer to this questions is that babies are ready to be sleep coached starting at 6 months of age but the real answer is much more complicated than that. And the reason it is more complicated than that is because even though the baby might be ready, successful sleep coaching depends on the Mom and the Dad being ready.

I started off with the best of intentions but things quickly fell apart, so that by the time my son was 10 months old he would only sleep if I held him. That meant that every nap I had to lay down with him, and every morning found him in my bed. And what started off as a pleasant bonding experience between my son and I quickly became a burden. I was tired. I was growing resentful. My marriage was starting to strain. But yet…..I was not ready.

I was afraid to make changes, afraid of what it might mean, afraid of the impact on the bond between my son and I. I was in desperate need of some sleep, in need of my son to sleep through the night in his own crib, and even though I knew that he was ready I was not.

And so my husband step in and stepped up. After our call with Kim West I turned to my husband and said, “I can not do this. I will cave and crumble, and I know I will go in and pick up our son if I hear him crying”. But I also told him that that I would not sabotage him. I told him that I will let him help me out of my dark tunnel of hopelessness and back into a happy, rested place. I told him that I would support him as he taught our son the skill of sleeping. This meant that I put an air mattress in our basement and planned on sleeping there for the first week.

Luckily for us our son was a quick study and an easygoing baby that took to sleeping relatively easy. But the point is that I was not ready and if I had not recognized that then I may have stepped in and sabotaged the sleep coaching.

If you are not ready then do not start, instead spend time getting ready. Work on finding the answers to what is stopping you. Reach out for help from family and friends. Dig deep to find what it is that you are afraid of. And if you need to, then allow others to give you the gift of strength until you can find your own.

My journey to being ready was not as long or as difficult as some families but it still has left me with empathy for Moms and Dads who want things to change but are afraid or unsure of how to create change.

Remember there is always a light at the end of the tunnel and if you no longer see it let me be the person who holds that light for you.